gtomos 's review for:

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
4.5
emotional funny lighthearted reflective relaxing sad

Manages to be funny and sad while never losing hold of its lightheartedness, which itself is derived from Pnin's own meanderings even as they are rooted in historical necessity.
The way he gives up his career, his whole life and deeply-loved little house, because he does not want to feel beholden to anyone who knew him from before 1917 - because that world and his parents and those memories are, presumably, for him and not to be shared with even the most sympathetic of onlookers - is brutal but beautiful.